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President Barack Obama on Thursday will outline his strategy for closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, hoping to defuse a revolt by lawmakers over the fate of an internationally reviled symbol of Bush-era detainee policy.

In a much-anticipated speech, Obama will defend his still-emerging plan to shutter the detention camp at a U.S. naval base in Cuba as he tries to ease concerns that some terrorism suspects held there could be set free in the United States.

Obama will renew the pledge he made in his first days in office to close Guantanamo by January 2010 but will apparently stop short of providing details demanded by friends and foes alike on what will be done with the facility’s remaining 240 prisoners.

At the same time Obama is speaking, former Vice President Dick Cheney, an architect of Bush’s detainee policy and a harsh critic of Obama’s efforts to dismantle it, will be at a Washington think tank giving a speech partly titled “Keeping America Safe.”

Four months into his presidency, Obama suffered a stinging setback on Wednesday when the Senate, controlled by fellow Democrats, blocked the $80 million he had sought for the shutdown until he decides what to do with the facility’s inmates.

Democratic lawmakers, worried that some of the prisoners could be jailed or even released in the United States, rebelled against Obama after opposition Republicans threatened to brand them as soft on terrorism. Please do answer us why Mr. President you want to release such dangerous Islamic terrorists, who have no love for United States, no love for democracy or our way of life, among us. You are doing a wonderful job economy wise but when it comes to this decision, as much as you are loved, you are fast becoming very unpopular. After the humiliating our premier spy agency CIA about the water boarding stuff, you had to make a quick back track, why didn’t some one of your intelligence see this coming. Why don’t your have some anti-terror law provisions where these hardcore Islamic terrorists will never see daylight among the common citizens of United States.

We elected you to make us safe not unsafe, you seem to have a hangover of anti-Bush era; our advice from here is make decisions which are mature.

Pakistan increasing nuclear warheads, warns US

Washington: The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, has confirmed reports that Pakistan is increasing its nuclear weapons programme, but has provided no details.The confirmation came during a Senate Armed Services committee hearing Thursday when Democrat senator Jim Webb, an expert on defence issues, raised fears that Pakistan is adding to the nuclear weapons it traditionally has pointed toward India, and questioned whether US aid could be funding it.

Noting reports that Pakistan “may be actually adding on their weapon systems and warheads” Webb asked: “Do you have any evidence of that?” “Yes,” Mullen answered.

Webb said that is a cause for “enormous concern,” because with the Islamic militant threat, he said, Pakistan’s government is not very stable.

The US has urged Pakistan to focus on the Islamic extremist threat instead of India. But Mullen told senators that it’s still unclear that Pakistani leaders can shift their focus for a long period even as they slowly acknowledge that militants pose more of a security risk.

“Historically, they haven’t done that,” Mullen said. “So right now, I’m encouraged by what’s happened, but I certainly withhold any judgment about where it goes because of the historic lack of sustainment, and they know they need to do that.”

Also at the hearing, Admiral Mullen said it is not only Pakistan’s top leaders who need to recognise the militant threat.

He said Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service, the ISI, must also change its approach, and one key to that is convincing its leaders there will be a long-term US commitment to helping them defeat the Islamic militants.

“The ISI in the long run has to change its strategic thrust and get away from working both sides,” he said. “That’s how they have been raised, certainly over the last couple of decades, and that’s what they [are going to continue to] believe, until they think we’re going to be there for a while.”
Asked by Senator John McCain, Republican presidential opponent of Barack Obama, whether he still worried “about the ISI cooperating with Taliban?”, Mullen simply said: “Yes, sir.”

Several senators voiced doubts about sending millions of dollars to Pakistan without assurances it will be spent to fight extremists who threaten security and political stability both there and in Afghanistan.

Next year’s Pentagon budget includes $700 million to train and otherwise help Pakistan fight Islamic Terroists.